Sonic Riders

Sonic Riders is a racing game based around characters racing each other using devices known as "Extreme Gear", anti-gravity-equipped vehicles consisting of hoverboards, hover skates, and hoverbikes. Players compete to finish three laps around a racetrack before their opponents and complete the race in first place. Each race features up to eight characters competing. A key gameplay component is the air tank, displayed in the screen's lower right-hand corner.

Air serves as the fuel for Extreme Gear, which is gradually depleted as the race continues. Characters can also perform a Boost, which will give them a sudden burst of speed at the cost of a significant amount of air. If a player boosts into an opponent, their character will attack and overtake them.

Jet, leader of the thieving Babylon Rogues, observes the Key to Babylon Garden, an artifact and family heirloom said to unlock the secrets of their Babylonian ancestors. Doctor Eggman arrives and claims he can use the Chaos Emeralds to make Babylon Garden rise, asking for the Rogues' help in retrieving them. The Rogues agree and steal an Emerald, but run into Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, who are also looking for the Emerald. Sonic gives chase, but Jet escapes with the Emerald.

The next day, the three heroes see Eggman on a digital billboard advertising an Extreme Gear race known as the EX World Grand Prix; participants must offer a Chaos Emerald to enter, with the winner being awarded all seven. When they realize that the Rogues are participating, Sonic and his friends enter as well.

Sonic Riders was developed by Sonic Team and Now Production for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Windows in commemoration of the Sonic series' 15th anniversary. The game was directed by Kenjiro Morimoto and produced by Takashi Yuda. Series co-creator Yuji Naka served as executive producer. Sonic Riders was the last Sonic game that Naka was involved with, providing input at the beginning of development and additional advice as the game progressed.

He resigned to form his own company, Prope, shortly after its release to focus on original games. G and directed by Kazuto Nakazawa, as well as CG-animated cutscenes by Marza Animation Planet.

According to the review aggregator website Metacritic, Sonic Riders received "mixed or average" reviews.

The game's presentation received mixed reactions from reviewers. GameSpot thought the visuals were well-produced and praised the brightly colored levels and character models, but noted frame rate drops and thought the environments looked "kind of drab and muddy" when the gameplay slowed down. GameSpy agreed and cited the graphics as one of the best parts of the game. IGN was more conflicted: they praised the graphical effects and backgrounds, but were critical of the blocky geometry and blurry textures and thought it was not as pretty as competing games.

Following the commercial success of Riders, Yuda stated there would certainly be a follow up. A sequel, Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, was released for the PlayStation 2 and Wii in 2008, with planned ports to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 conceived but never realized. The gameplay of Zero Gravity remains similar to its predecessor, but replaces the air system with a gravity-altering mechanic alongside other minor changes; like its predecessor, Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity received a generally mixed critical reception. A third game, Sonic Free Riders, was released as a launch title for the Xbox 360's Kinect peripheral on November 4, 2010, with the gameplay once again altered to have players use motion controls to move around the board; critical reception to Free Riders was poor, primarily due to the unreliability of said motion controls. Free Riders would be the last Sonic racing game with Extreme Gear until the release of the kart racing game Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (2025), which also allows players to race using Extreme Gear.

Despite their generally negative reception from critics, the Babylon Rogues have made sporadic appearances across the Sonic series. Archie Comics published a brief adaptation of the game in their Sonic the Hedgehog comic series, as well as further plot points featuring the Babylon Rogues in Sonic Universe. After IDW Publishing began printing their Sonic comics, the Babylon Rogues were reintroduced in the 2019 Annual, and they would be featured in multiple subsequent story arcs. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds also features the Babylon Rogues as playable characters.